Sunday, September 11, 2011

Sambal Goreng Tempe / Fried Spiced Tempe

Tempe, the soul of Indonesia Culinary.This is one of the food ingredients that almost every week is served on our dining table. When were abroad, many times it made us homesick when we missed it.

The easiest and most popular way to serve this excellent meat subsitute is frying. Slice it, soak with water and salt, then fry it. Or you can dip the slices of tempe in flour mix with salt (or with same spices) and water then fry it.

Want something flavorful and special ? Try our favorite dish here. After many-many times I cook this humble dish, I decided to upload the recipe in this blog. Need a bit more effort than just slice and fry, but trust me, no one can't resist this sweet and salty tempe dish.

To prepare the ground spices, like many other Indonesian dishes, we need to crush the fresh spices and root (galangal) to become coarse paste in a cobek (~mortar). You can use chopper to make the job easier, but I believe using a mortar is the way in which the spice paste is made effects the flavor of the dish, and the effort while crushing the spice; patient, powerful, slow, rapid, will give best flavor and texture for the dish.

After slicing and marinating the tempe, we need to 'half' fry it to make it firmer, tastier and creating an attractive golden color.

The sweet ending is mixturing. Start with frying the spices paste, herbs, lemongrass, chillies and pete' in the little oil that will release the flavor and fill the kitchen atmospher, also the whole house, with exciting aromas. Continue with mixing all remaining ingredients including the tempe. This time the soft cubes of tempe will absorb all the wonderful flavor of chillies, kecap, and spices.Please, help yourself... get a plate, warm rice and Sambal Goreng Tempe.

For you who are not familiar with one of the famous ingredient in this recipe, let me introduce you with Pete' or bitter bean or some people call it 'stink bean'.